


by the end of the night

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7868695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>We are older, Dorian thought. We are smaller than we imagine. I have made the Bull huge in my mind, in so many different ways, but here he is—only a middle-aged man, living a dangerous life.</em>
</p><p>Dorian treats Bull gently, in his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by the end of the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taispeantas_laethuil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/gifts).



> Prompt: Dorian treats Bull gently.

It was a dull grey hour, not yet dawn, when Dorian arrived at the corpse of the villa. On the stairs to the door, his footsteps thudded, the fog deadening. A quick rhythm. Dead, dead, dead.

"No," Krem said, hunched in the grey kitchen, the fire only powdery dead logs in the grate, faintly warm. Krem was grey too, his face blurred with fear. "Not dead, thank the Maker, but he should've been. Great idiot."

In his mind, Dorian folded; he saw himself kneel on the floor, felt himself screaming frustration. Fear.

He had screamed when his father died, and the Bull had put his arms around him, knelt with him on the damn floor and let him work it all out.

He breathed.

He did not fold; only held the image, examined it, and found it melodramatic. And all the same, tempting.

"Then for the love of Andraste stop looking as though you're mourning," he said. He meant to say it briskly, but the shadow of death was wrapped too closely around him. In need of a necromancer to guide it away, in need of purification, offerings. How much more difficult to perform the rites when it was so personal. "Where is he?"

"Main bedroom," Krem said. "Probably awake. Nobody's having a damn bit of luck getting him to rest." An open-palmed gesture; I wash my hands of it.

Dorian went. Birds shuffled in the bare rafters above the library. Bones picked bare, the tiles from this part of the roof long gone. Scattered pages like dead leaves.

The sleepy conversation of jackdaws was harsh in the growing light. 

Skinner, at the end of the hall by a high broken window, said, "I'll skin him myself if he doesn't shut up."

Stepped aside in the sudden gold of the sunrise, her pale face fierce, jagged with the strange shadows of the shattered panes.

And the Bull, in the hastily stripped down bed under an intact roof, covered in the Chargers' own blankets.

We are older, Dorian thought. We are smaller than we imagine. I have made the Bull huge in my mind, in so many different ways, but here he is—only a middle-aged man, living a dangerous life.

Here I am, the same.

"Hey, Skinner," the Bull said. His voice sounded raw, from damage or pain. "You gonna let me up?"

His eye was closed.

"If you don't recognise my footsteps," Dorian said, "then I really don't think so."

"You," the Bull said. "Shit—Kadan—"

"You didn't think I would come running?" Dorian asked. "No, no. Stay as you are. Don't shave any more years from my life than you already have with this ridiculous stunt. Who were you trying to save?"

"There was a kid," the Bull said. "She got scared, didn't realise how close she was to the edge. Stupid way to go. She's so young."

Present tense.

Dorian reached out to touch the Bull's hand, rubbed gentle circles with his fingers. Felt how the skin had begun to grow thinner.

"You fell," Dorian said, "from a fucking cliff."

"Yeah."

"You broke the sending crystal."

"Yeah."

"I will be very angry," Dorian said. "I'm quite sure I'll be very angry. Possibly tomorrow. What do you need?"

"You," the Bull said, and it was the uncertainty to the word that finally bowed Dorian; forehead to the Bull's hand, clasped between both of his own, a helpless gesture of prayer.

"You have me," he said, words against the Bull's knuckles, followed by a kiss. 

He had been kidnapped, once, and perhaps this was how the Bull had felt then. The white desperation, the frantic search.

How will I ever let go of your hand again?

They had almost died so many times, both of them, and still this felt worse; more genuine, laughably. As though death cared for authenticity.

But the Bull was strong.

It had been enough.

Dorian settled beside him, careful of unknown injuries, the cost not yet counted. Kissed his hand again, stroked his clammy forehead.

The Bull's eye blinked open to look up at him, hazy.

"Yes, yes," Dorian said, softly, "it really is me. I'm here."

He kissed moisture from the Bull's cheek, wiped gently at his eye. Around his other hand, the Bull's fingers tightened.

Unreadable, this grief. How many things they had both endured. And this, such a small thing in its way—

And still, Dorian felt it too.

"I'm here," he said again. "I'm afraid I may not leave. It's possible you're stuck with me."

"Think I can live with that," the Bull said; laughed at it like it was a bad joke, broke off with a pained grunt. "Shit, can't a guy laugh?"

"You should have thought of that earlier," Dorian said. "I'm going to help you move. I won't be able to steal your blankets if there isn't space for me in the bed."

"You _like_ me," the Bull said, in such a tone that Dorian suspected Stitches had fed him something shortly before Dorian arrived, although it might only have been his winning personality shining through.

"You really mustn't go around telling people that," Dorian said, helping him. 

The sun was breathing slow life into the room, a first edge of warmth to the air.

The Bull sighed out a pleased breath when it fell across his face.

"There you are," Dorian said, and made quick enough work of unlacing his boots; crawled into the bed beside the Bull.

Took his hand again to feel the life of him, the warmth. The dull thudding of his pulse in his wrist. Alive, alive, alive.


End file.
